Dave Roberts wrote:I heard on NPR just a few minutes ago that Patterson is out. The thing that struck me, if accurate was that SWBTS was described as a 1,200-student school. Didn't it once have 2,500 students (by FTE counts)? Patterson, in his advise to a raped young woman obviously broke the laws of Texas. Rape is a crime, period!

When I enrolled at Southwestern, fall of 1987, during the tenure of Dr. Russell Dilday, and immediately following that of Dr. Robert Naylor, who was President Emeritus, the enrollment was just over the 5,000 mark. It was the largest theological seminary in the world and received the accolades of the readers of Christianity Today as the top theological seminary in the country. The enrollment figure included about 150 students on a satellite campus in Houston, another 100 students on a satellite campus in Dallas, and I believe there was an extension center in Oklahoma City with about 100 students. The FTE was well over 4,500. The school's residence halls were so crowded, that the seminary purchased a 200-unit apartment complex about two blocks east of the campus.

I wonder how common it is, and if there is any connection, that denominations that do not allow women to be clergy also have leaders who do a bad job with handling the abuse of women? It feels like there is a connection between telling women that they are second class in the church and also second class in their marriage to going a step even farther to expecting women to tolerate abuse.

I'm not saying many Southern Baptists would agree with Patterson's view on a woman staying with an abuser or not reporting a rape. I'm sure most Southern Baptists are shocked. But it feels like this is what you ultimately get when people teach a theology where women aren't equal to men.